a series of small flames
by faktory
Summary: It had been so easy to believe that he was strong enough until suddenly, he wasn't. – [Post-Sabaody, Post-Impel Down, & Post-Marineford ficlets by land, air, and sea.]
1. exercises in futility (luffy)

**notes:** hey ya'll. so, i haven't written any fanfiction since middle school *cringes*, but i figure i might as well make another attempt now that i'm older and my writing is slightly less terrible. anyway, this is the first of a series of ficlets, this is the first of a series of ficlets, centering on the lives of different characters during/after the three-arc disaster leading up to the timeskip. the title is taken from the song "A Series of Small Flames" by Land of Talk.

chronologically, this particular scene takes place about three months after Rayleigh has left Luffy to complete his training on Rusukaina; so, three months before the post-timeskip reunion.

**general warnings for the series: **canonical character death(s), violence/gore, various mental health issues (ptsd, anxiety, low self-esteem, and dissociation just to name a few), shameless headcanon-ing, etc. also, spoilers all the way through to the Return to Sabaody Arc.

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><p><strong>exercises in futility <strong>

**[or: the truth about winning and losing.]**

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><p>He remembers, because he cannot afford to forget.<p>

At least, that's what he tells himself. After all, it had been so easy to believe that he was strong enough until suddenly, he wasn't.

Isn't.

So Luffy remembers, in spatters of blues and greens, the way the wind had carried off with the screams of his nakama and thinned them into nothing, and the spaces that their bodies left where they had stood seconds before. He remembers, in flashes of reds and browns, the smell of blood when it sizzled and flesh when it fried, and the loudness of death where it filled the absence of his brother's heartbeat. And he's angry, because it frightens him in ways he doesn't understand, and he wants the memories to sleep for the night, but it's at least fifteen below outside and Rayleigh isn't here anymore. This is something Luffy has to do on his own.

(Alone.)

(No, no. That's not true. He knows that's not true, but—)

He shakes the thought from his head at its roots. There's no way he's getting hung up on stupid stuff like that again.

Luffy feeds the spark of flame in the fire pit with few handfuls of twigs and treebark, and with sustenance it outright _flares._ His eyes widen and he makes as if to jump back, but his hands still linger in the warmth a little longer than is strictly necessary.

(He should be resting. He should be training. He should be doing _something._ The nightmares hadn't been too frequent while Rayleigh was here, but now Rayleigh is gone and his nakama are gone and his brothers are gone and he's…)

"But I'm _not_." He tells himself firmly, voice scratched up from the smoke, because this self-pity stuff is bullshit. "Not _really_, I mean—everyone's waiting for me. Zoro and Nami and Usopp and Sanji and Chopper and Robin and Franky and Brook." He lists each name aloud, counting on his fingers because it makes everything seem less far away. He imagines that they all must've gotten a lot stronger by now. Stronger for each other. Stronger for him, too, even though he'd failed them so grievously before. Because their dreams are bigger than all of the sad stuff; his are, too, even if he sometimes forgets it.

It shouldn't be so easy to forget in the first place, though. And that's just one more reason to be angry, 'cause at this point he can't afford to have anything get in his way. He can't be weak like that again. He thinks back to when Rayleigh'd told him about all the different kinds of strength, and about learning to trust himself all over again because healing was a part of getting stronger, too. Luffy doesn't really know what any of that means, but he doesn't think he has the kind of strength that Rayleigh was talking about. He's good at punching things, sure, but all that thinky-stuff is best left to other people. Trust has always been a tricky thing, he knows, but at least he can trust his nakama to be strong where he's lacking, and to trust him for all the times he can't do it himself.

(Do you think you deserve to be trusted again?)

(And what about the times when trust isn't enough?)

_No._ This isn't helping anything. His hands shake, alarm bells blaring between his ears even though he tells himself over and over again that nothing's wrong. His eyes dart around in his skull, sweeping out from the pyre, and he tries to ignore how the tree branches knot together like the claws of monsters…and feels stupid for his fear because he is the man who has brought _real _monsters to their knees dozens of times over.

But all this thinking is starting to get to him, and he just can't untwist the nightmare from where it tangles in his vision; the glow of a demon's fist clenched full of molten rock, reaching and seeking and _finding—_and settling with a savage grin, because apparently any good flesh with bad blood is substitute enough. And it isn't even the fear that Luffy remembers the worst; it's that split-second where he saw his own death snatched away from him, as though it could be taken and given for the sake of convenience. As though he would not have payed it graciously so long as he could die as he'd lived.

But that? It felt wrong. It felt _cheap._

_(He wasn't the one you wanted.)_

Inevitably, he looks again to the flames.

When Ace had fallen, all the loudness cut to silence. Even the wind stopped mid-blow. Everything, in equilibrium with the chaos of death, had unwoven and lain flat and grey and callous as the last flickers of light went out in his brother's eyes. He understands, now, in a way that he didn't in the throes of his mourning, what such a sacrifice meant. That he has no right to regret the life he'd been gifted, no choice now but to live even more ferociously for his dream. It's the least he can do.

So he remembers. He remembers because it is his burden to bear and his torch to carry. The truth about winning and losing, the smell of skin and sulfur, the way the cinders had burned when they landed in his eyes because he _could not look away—_

Luffy turns his back on the fire. He can't stand to watch it any longer, but he doesn't have the heart to snuff it out.

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><p><strong>end notes: <strong>i'm pretty rusty, i know, but still! please let me know what you think/correct my typos/call me out on OOC-ness/etc.


	2. fear itself (usopp)

**notes: **sorry this took so long (if anyone is reading this at all lmao), but i'm a slow worker and combined with real life shenanigans i barely have the time to churn out a couple lines of original fic, let alone feel inspired enough to write for someone else's characters.

also, i should note that not every subject will be one of the Strawhats (stay tuned for the next chapter! it should be out more promptly than this one was). and that the whole sort of conglomeration of the Sabaody-Impel Down-Marineford trilogy is what's really being explored here, because different parts stand out as major traumas for different people but everything is ultimately connected. buuuuuuuut i digress.

here is an Usopp. enjoy his misery.

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><p><strong>fear itself<strong>

**[or: some bitter medicine to swallow.]**

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><p>When he opens his eyes, he doesn't scream.<p>

He doesn't do anything, actually. Just lies there, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish, wondering at the size of the sky and the span of a second. That's all it had taken. That's all.

That's all.

His bones ache from the crash landing, and the canopy of flowers above him is still twisted with vertigo. He feels clumsy and desperate, like a sea king cast ashore by a great storm. He doesn't remember how he got here―only the way that he'd opened his mouth, called out to his captain, and had the winds knocked out of him just as quick and twice as quiet. After that, only snap-blurs of wild blues remain, tangled in the words he hadn't said which now leave his lungs empty with unease. _I should be dead, _he thinks. _But I'm alive._

Usopp spares himself the private thought that such things really shouldn't come as a shock to him anymore. After all, he is strong _(lies)_ and brave _(more lies) _and he's survived worse _(there is nothing worse). _A true warrior must always expect the unexpected―must fear nothing, not even fear itself.

(But Usopp has always been a coward.)

In his year at sea, he has been forced to face a great deal of his fears. But he had never expected this―this terror clutching at his heart like a sieve, the hollow feeling surging out from under his skin which renders him motionless, stuck in this godforsaken Usopp-sized hole in the dirt of an island full of colors he never even knew existed. He can't run and he can't hide, but he can't fight either.

There's just_..._nothing.

He should've seen this coming earlier. Should've cut his losses and saved himself the grief. But he was_ proud_, so proud, and so twisted up in his own fables that he'd let down the very people he'd been striving to protect.

His mother had taught him that sometimes lying could be merciful. Kaya had taught him to forget the distance between truth and lies. The Usopp Pirates had taught him to lie for the sake of others. Most of all, he had taught_ himself,_ in his years as an orphan and a pariah and a leader,that sometimes lies could be vessels of hope. It hadn't begun as a way to cover up weakness, for him―it was how he'd learned to be strong in the first place.

And it had worked, _miraculously _so, and for far longer than it should have. But today, with no heavy-plated mask between himself and the world, and no method to his madness, he'd come to realize that all the strength had never really been his to begin with.

That was some bitter medicine to swallow, wasn't it? For as many problems as it might have solved to admit these things ages earlier, they'd tasted like a poison swill and even now he's not sure he could've kept it all down, had it come any earlier than it did. Like ripping off a bandage, peeling back these farces always stole away a part of him, too.

But telling the lies?_ That's_ easy. There's nothing to it. Really, really nothing. Sometimes he slips into his own stories without even knowing. It's the simplest way to quell his pride, too, simpler than telling the truth or letting go of fear or learning the difference between bravery and hubris. So whenever he'd fought, he'd fought on the edge of his lies in the place where he could almost be a hero. And he'd won, and he'd won again, and eventually started to think_ well maybe this wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe if you tell a lie enough it even starts to become the truth. Maybe―_

And then the Marines swept in like a great flood and drowned him where he stood.

He's trying not to think about that part, though, because the space below his eyes is wet and heavy and the fauna are blurring into shards of color, but he tells himself he isn't crying, _no way, no how. _This time he isn't really sure if it's the truth or not, and he's starting to believe it doesn't matter anyway. Just like the colors, the once-great distance between truth and lies has long since blurred into something thick and swampy and insubstantial, filling him in the places where wind and words used to be.

He's _terrified._

Because when he closes his eyes he doesn't see truth or lies, he doesn't see cowardice or bravery; he sees the way that Brook had so assuredly rushed to take a blow meant for him, or how Sanji had shoved him from the monster's path, fire-eyed and without a speck of regard for his own life, or even the look on his captain's face as he'd had the heart ripped from his chest despite all number of bargains and capitulations. He sees that he had taken and given nothing in return and now he is alonealonealone (and the way he screams it in his head it sounds like mourning bells)_, _left to face this ugliness borne of his own construction. He hadn't been ready. He doesn't think he could ever be ready.

And yet, here he is.

The bushes to his right rustle menacingly, and he thinks (cold and distant below the fear) that with his luck it's probably some kind of gigantic, flesh-eating monster. But then the ground begins to rumble, and he can feel his brain rattling against his skull where it jarrs up the voices to match the pictures and he remembers: _three days, in three days I have to, I have to fight, I have to live, I―_

_I'll do right by him this time._

The vine cluster bursts forth from the bush like a sentient beast, sending chunks of soggy dirt flying as it sways. And okay, he maybe screams a little at the sight of it. It's a gigantic, menacing thing, poised for attack with its thickly-barbed vines sharpened to a throat-slashing edge. The barbs cut through the canopy of petals and its tendrils beeline for..._his head, holy shit!_

It misses by about a meter as he rolls himself out of harm's way, arms shaking and he tries to regain some semblance of composure. Clambering to his feet, Usopp retreats towards a cluster of the least dangerous-looking trees around, groping blindly for his slingshot. When he finds it, bruised and cracked and at his beck and call, his grip sweats and his eyes still sting with grief and his aim is shaky at best but he knows, he _knows_ that he cannot lose this battle. He isn't strong enough, never has been, but maybe there's something to be said for admitting his weakness in the first place. There has to be something. There has to be.

Because Usopp thinks he wouldn't mind swallowing his pride, or the truth, or any other poison, if it meant the chance to bring his family home again.

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><p><strong>end notes:<strong> fun fact: Usopp's chapter on Boin Archipelago was titled『一人じゃ死ぬ病』(roughly translated: _the "being alone will kill me" disease_).


	3. androktasiai (coby, helmeppo)

**notes:** the author, it lives!

it took me literally over an hour to upload this correctly (html formatting was being a dickhead).

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><p><strong>androktasiai<strong>

**[or: at a loss for words.]**

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><p>It's quiet.<p>

"…They wouldn't stop _screaming_."

And then it's not.

Coby's voice is all wind and no word, but Helmeppo jerks violently from a tentative half-sleep at the sound of it, damn near falling out of his seat in the process. It's strange, how attuned they've become to one another lately. It's a kind of desperate symbiosis, a kind that no amount of training could have prepared them for. But for all his trying this is something he just can't understand. He would hate himself for it if the very act didn't feel so selfish.

_(Not everything is about you.)_

"They wouldn't…it was so loud. It was―god, _god_. I couldn't even…"

Oh. This again.

He mostly tunes it out, at this point; half-guilty but twice too far exhausted to lend the whole of an ear. Coby's face is wet with the remnants of his terror, pink tufts of hair sharp and sticky with salt down the back of his neck. He's awake but only by a margin, featherlight breathing and a thousand-yard stare to wake a dead man from his rest.

It's never the same thing twice over. Never quite the same memory, never quite the same screams echoing or pistols blowing. And that's the real trouble of it, Coby had said. The way the voices had stewed together in death with nary a name or a face to put to them. The fear is in the anonymity; the difference between _battlefield_ and _slaughterhouse._

Physically speaking, Coby's healed up pretty quickly―he hadn't attained any major injuries beyond a couple of bruised ribs and an ankle fracture―but they still aren't too keen on releasing him, yet. At this point they're still trying to assess whether or not the overload to his Haki so early on had caused some sort of ABI, or if he was just exhibiting standard signs of combat fatigue.

_("You can never quite tell with Haki users." The doctor had explained, flat-faced for all that Helmeppo was a tangle of nerves. "We still don't entirely know how such things interact on a neurobiological level; his cognition is a little off, still, so we're keeping him here a while longer for observation. It's _probably _nothing physiological, but…" She'd trailed off, searching for a placating string of words, "…better safe than sorry, no?" _

_He hadn't had anything to say to that, either.)_

Helmeppo himself had been discharged from the hospital over a week ago―a little less than two days after the battle had come to an end―but'd hardly had the chance to leave since, spending almost every free second at his friend's bedside. The nurse had suggested, at one point, that he head back to the barracks before he made himself sick with worry. It doesn't matter much, though; he's spent his whole life being selfish, and with the only person in the world he gives a damn about lying half-dead and half-crazy in a hospital bed, he isn't about fall back into old habits any time soon.

He hopes that the fit passes soon, and Coby can get some real sleep; the doctor had jacked up his morphine dose after he'd had an _incident_ with one of the nurses a couple days back, and moved him to a private room at the end of the wing _("We need to monitor his exposure to external stimuli and―")._ For the most part he's been calmer for it, and although Helmeppo doesn't quite agree with their methods of pacification he's willing to accept that sometimes the ends justify the means.

"―to _help_ them, and what could I do? What could I do?"

But only sometimes.

Coby reasons with himself in hushed tones where his eyes fix and settle somewhere beyond the dark of the window. His shoulders are hunched together protectively, brow knotted in concentration. He's got a hand pinned to the side of his head, over his ear, as his breath comes out in sharp edges, cutting through the fog of his mantra.

He can almost see it, the way the dead flash their screams behind his eyes, but Helmeppo has never been much of an empath (has never been much of anything at all). And for all his jealousy upon discovering Coby's budding Kenbunshoku, he can't help but wonder now if he'll ever be strong enough to bare that kind of burden.

At this point, he isn't so sure he'd _want_ to.

At sixes and sevens, he says: "You can't save everyone." Feels almost flippant, the way it comes out, and he blinks―once, twice―marveling at his own stupidity. All he's really doing is wringing out the old platitude for answers it doesn't have. Then, a little more softly, more carefully: "No one was expecting you to."

That does…something. Because Coby stops muttering, stops speaking entirely, and turns his whole body to face Helmeppo―slowly, as if unaccustomed to the weight of his limbs. He's got bags under his eyes, dark shadows like he'd been punched in the face repeatedly, and when he speaks he actually _snarls. _"You don't know what you're talking about. You _never _know what you're talking about."

Oh.

It's the only time Coby's spoken to him all day, and (a little contrite) Helmeppo finds himself wishing he'd kept quiet. He can _deal _with the unhinged mumbling, with the nightmares and the flashbacks and the silence, but this is―something _else._ In all fairness, the doctor _had _warned him that Coby might lash out; he just hadn't expected it to sting so damn much.

He doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything.

_Déjà vu__. _He's been at a loss for words a lot, lately.

"…_Say something."_ Coby grits out, parroting his fear. He's frustrated, aimlessly so, but Helmeppo is _right there _and he'd be lying if he said that snapping at someone didn't feel a little bit cathartic, after everything. "Didn't you _hear_ me?"

(At the very least, he has the decency to feel embarrassed about it.)

More silence. Coby's just about to roll over and go back to 'sleep', when he hears:

"It wasn't your fault, you know."

The remark comes of its own volition, and Helmeppo wants to hit himself because he just knows _this is going to be another one of those _things_, and how the hell do you expect to be of any help at all when you keep doing this whole open-mouth-insert-foot-schtick―_

"…Thanks."

He looks up. Coby is staring at him owlishly, round eyes looking comically bright in the dim glow of the sick bay's fluorescents, but he blinks away sharply after they make eye contact. Seems surprised at his own mouth, too. But strangely enough, he continues:

"And…it's not your fault, either."

Oh.

It's the kind of thing he would've never realized he'd needed to hear, except that now that he has his hands won't stop shaking and his eyes pinch. It feels ungainly―he's not used to crying anything but crocodile tears―and he almost turns to hide his face completely before thinking better of it. Coby spares him another glance, and (wordlessly) shuffles closer to the window, leaving a space on the bed to his left. Helmeppo stares at it for a good minute before taking the hint.

There's nothing noble about suffering in silence, he knows (which is all fine and good, since neither of them are especially adept at stoicism in the first place), but there's not much left to say that can be said, now. It's all up in the air, in silence and in trust. The rest of their time is for waiting.

Absentmindedly, Helmeppo combs a hand through Coby's hair. In return, Coby leans his head on Helmeppo's shoulder, closing his eyes. The contact is nice, even if it's not really what either of them need. But it helps, and they can hear one another's breathing even out in synch. Really, the whole scene would be sweet―if more than a little embarrassing―under any other circumstances. Instead, watching Coby's eyes drift shut for the second time tonight, Helmeppo just feels jaded. Inadequate.

But he stays, awake for what imaginary terrors lie in wait, for what memories he can't kill and what faith he can't give. It's not worth much, coming from someone like him but―what else can he do? What else can he do?

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><p><strong>end notes:<strong> this one drew waaaay more from personal experience than i thought it would. huh. took longer, too. probably 'cause i've been paying attention to my other in-progress fics that i've yet to post. also because Real Life Responsibilities are still a thing.

and yeah, i know it reads a little weird, but it's taken so long for me to punch this one out already i figured it was better to just post the damn thing than spend ages agonizing over word choice or whatever the fuck. (/but tell me if there are any typos, lmao.)


	4. makings & beings (robin, sabo)

**notes:** robin + sabo interaction is the bomb diggity and there is simply not enough of it in existence. that is all.

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><p><strong>makings &amp; beings<strong>

**[or: the marrow of their mutual heartache.]**

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><p>"You're awake."<p>

His words are muddled by a trick of the wind, but Robin recognizes the voice almost immediately. Turning from her seat on the foremast to see the deck below, her eye catches on the yawning movement of a hatch to her left, her shipmate's shadow beginning to wedge itself into the lamplight with an incongruous air of caution. Plain sight confirms her suspicions, finding a source in the bright-eyed young man whose reaching hand now begs the question of her own. "C'mon down from there." He says, wiggling his fingers for emphasis. "Current's nasty tonight. It'd be a shame if you fell into the ocean after all the hard work you've done, huh?"

She smiles cordially, taking the hand in her own and stepping carefully down from her perch. "Good evening to you too, Sabo-kun." Then, a little more thoughtfully: "Although it could hardly be considered evening anymore, I suppose."

The sky is darker than she's seen in weeks; yesterday was a new moon all together, and so tonight there's only the tiniest sliver of white left hanging up above, not adding much of anything to visibility. The light of the city they'd left behind earlier that day has long since disappeared over the thin horizon, and she can barely tell the black of the water below from that of the sky above.

"Robin." Sabo turns, suddenly, to look her in the face. It's unnerving. She's still not used to people looking at her like that (or looking at her at all, really). But Sabo is Luffy's brother through and through, and he seems to pay as little mind to social graces as the rest of his crew—or her's, for that matter.

"Are you having trouble sleeping?" He asks. Just like that. She almost envies the ease with which he meddles in the business of near strangers; he seems so at peace in this dark, shoulder to shoulder with a trained assassin who he's known for less than a month. The question has an implacable undercurrent to it, murmured so it shifts without settling and leaves her feeling more than a little overexposed.

Robin has no response, so she does not give him one.

He seems to pay it little mind, though, opting instead to fill in his own blanks. "I can't sleep either. I never can, the first night after we set sail again. There's always something on mind, y'know? Especially these days. Everything is so _different_ now." He admits.

Sensing the open pause in his rambling, she acquiesces. "It is…strange, I suppose. To be away from him for so long, after everything." There's no need to clarify the _him_ to which she is referring—wherever Luffy is mentioned, they are of one mind.

"Yeah." Sabo closes his eyes. "It always is."

It's easy to intuit what he means, all things considered, but Robin is less than enthused about prying into the marrow of their mutual heartache. Besides, she never even knew Ace—her pain is more or less vicarious, but his remains an open wound. There is nothing she can do.

Right?

Still, to keep silent at this point would be decidedly unkind. While she's at least marginally familiar the etiquette for dealing with situations such as these, she's pretty rusty in the people skills department (not that she has any need for such things, back home), and her ability to empathize has always left something to be desired.

"Would you…like to talk about it?" She finally ventures, with no small amount of dread.

Sabo blinks back at her, shock clear on his face. Obviously, he is equally ill-prepared for whatever turn their conversation seems to have taken. Swallowing the worst of his disquiet, he hesitates. "I don't know if…I mean, I haven't seen him since we were kids, and…and." He clears his throat, brow furrowed in the thick of regret. Such a countenance is more suited to a confused child, really—although, she thinks, perhaps the difference is not so great. "I couldn't say anything without putting them in danger. Either of them. I never even…it's just, I always thought there'd be more time…"

"You had no reason to believe otherwise." Robin levels, her uncertainty taking refuge in logic, casting off her fears. But in the pause that follows, alien feelings thought dead by fire resurrect against her better sense, crippling as the memory-dreams of her youth. It is not the images of loss that haunt her now—not since her homecoming from Enies Lobby—but she is weary of the inevitable pain they bring.

She doesn't turn, doesn't even spare him a glance, eyes fixed stubbornly on the tangled stars above them. "It's okay to grieve, Sabo-kun." It seems like a silly thing to say, all things considered, but she knows the way that guilt pervades across miles, and how it infects the light of day from the silence of night. _You owe it to yourself…_ "I know that you loved him, too."

(Sabo covers his face, but he's not crying.)

"I also know," She continues, passive gaze flickering over the occlusive coil of his mouth, the space between his hands, "that he would never blame you for any of this, even if he knew the truth."

He shakes his head, all rattled-guts and guilty pleas. It's not as though he _wants_ to be at fault, but any attempts to convince himself otherwise have only ever left him feeling irresponsible and more ashamed than he'd been before. How the hell is he supposed to man up and face the music when everyone else is only hearing silence?

"You don't get it. I wasn't even there, not for either of them. And besides, how could you_ know—_"

"—Because he's my captain." Robin replies simply, firmly, like it should answer all of his questions.

And.

Maybe it does.

Sabo bows his head. "Robin…" He breaths, but when he opens his mouth again to speak he finds only that same silence, the conspicuous absence of whatever music awaits his condemnation. The sound of her voice, of the way she'd said _my captain,_ it all makes him feel like he's taken a blow to the windpipe from Koala's busōshoku uppercut. He's running on empty, now.

Ever since this woman had come aboard his ship, he had been struck endlessly with the sensations of being both closer to and further from his brother than he'd ever felt since their separation; had, in equal parts, avoided her and sought her out, as though she were the cause and cure for every wicked thought he'd had. He knows next to nothing about her, and yet his feelings have already become so dichotomized. Still, he hadn't even considered that any of it would come to a head like this, that she would have the gall to confront him on such things—

But she is Luffy's crewmate, Luffy's nakama, and he shouldn't have expected anything less. He owes them both that much.

So he stays beside her, picking the stars apart. They pass the hours like that, in spans of silence and sound, in the company of asterisms whose names he doesn't think to ask. Instead, it's her with the questions, and him with the answers. All this talk doesn't make it stop hurting, really, but the memories lend him strength, and the strength gives him hope. For what, he doesn't know just yet, but it's worth taking a chance on. That's what Ace would've wanted, too.

"That kind of man…who was he, exactly?"

_(The man: not the son, not the brother, not the legend, not the pirate.)_

He tells her.

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><p><strong>end notes:<strong> the further i get into this series, the more personal it seems to get. huh. anyways, i originally wrote more than half of this dialogue in japanese, so if it sounds extra clunky, that's why. also, i was tempted to add a steven universe reference near the end ("strong in the real way" was playing in my head and everything), but i do have _some_ modicum of self control.


End file.
